Wealthy nations must lead on climate change

As Canada assumes its G8 presidency, following Italy, it has the opportunity to move beyond the false dichotomy of choosing to either protect the environment or ensure economic development. If the G8 countries do not make the global climate a priority, they neglect the long-term economic stewardship their people also elected them to ensure.
The G8 countries have an essential role to play in exercising the leadership required. A report just released by WWF, the international conservation organization, and Allianz, the global insurance firm, for example, ranks G8 countries performing at a level below proportional responsibility and expectations in action on global warming.
Some like Canada even backtracked on commitments to regulate industrial greenhouse gases (GHGs). Canada is also seeking to slow others' progress, by, for example, threatening to challenge the state of California's new fuel standards as well as U.S. efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through international trade law.
Yet Canadians, like many other people I meet wherever I travel, are anxious about the effects of global warming on themselves and others, willing to make changes in their own lives to address it, and keen for their governments to be at the forefront of action on climate change.
Compared to the G8, per capita GHG emissions in the least developed countries are negligible. Yet it is people in these poor countries who will be climate change's biggest victims, contending with drought, floods, erratic rainfall and desertification -- with the least capacity or means to adapt.
In May, hundreds of people in Bangladesh and India lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were flooded out of their homes by an unusually powerful cyclone. In Darfur, drought, land degradation and a spreading desert have led to a scramble over pasture, farmland and water. Fuelled by leaders competing for power, the conflict has led to displacement, sexual violence, and premature death on a massive scale.
In my own country, Kenya, the seasonal rains failed, again. Farmers' crops are withering before their eyes. Ten million Kenyans, almost a third of the population, are facing hunger, or worse.
Twenty-six million people already have been displaced as a result of climate change and 375 million may be at risk by 2015, according to a new report by Oxfam. Climate refugees could number 200 million by the middle of this century.
The report also documents the effects of climate change on individuals in poor countries, including a farmer in Haiti who no longer experiences a rainy season, only a "hurricane season"; and a young mother and her children in rural Zambia forced by flooding to flee their home.
Climate change will disproportionately affect women, who are most directly dependent on natural resources: water, wood for fuel and heat, good soils and rain for crops. Of course women aren't solely victims. They often lead their communities in adapting to, or rebuilding, after extreme weather and are quick to reduce, reuse and recycle. In Japan this concept of 3R is locally translated into a concept known as mottainai, which calls for respect, gratitude and a deliberate effort not to waste. Women are essential to developing climate solutions; many already are.
To take just one example, the Green Belt Movement is partnering with the World Bank's Community Development Carbon Fund Project to reforest two mountain areas in Kenya. At the centre of the project are networks of rural women. By 2017, the trees they plant will have captured an estimated 375,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Equally important is the campaign to save the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem, of which I am the goodwill ambassador. G8 countries can support similar, women-led initiatives.
The world's wealthiest nations need to commit both to significant reductions in their GHGs, as well as a "green deal." Such a deal should include support for development, access and affordability of green technology, particularly for energy, and protection of intact forests, which absorb and store carbon dioxide. (Forest destruction and degradation contributes up to 20 per cent of global carbon emissions.)
In addition, the G8 needs to allot new financial resources for mitigation and adaptation, including an "emergency fund" of $2 billion, to build the capacity of poor countries to manage current and expected climate-related challenges.
Grappling with the human costs of global warming can't be done on the cheap. According to Oxfam, $150 billion a year will be needed by 2030 to help developing countries address climate impacts and create low-carbon economies. It is a significant sum, but many wars -- almost all of which have at their root a struggle over scarce natural resources -- exact a far higher price.
Even if the world's wealthiest and fastest-developing nations adopt the strict limits on GHGs that scientists say are essential, hundreds of millions of people will be affected by climate change. Millions already are.
The Italian G8 summit was moved to L'Aquila so the heads of state could demonstrate solidarity with the region's people, recovering from April's devastating earthquake. Climate change, too, threatens catastrophic disruption. Canada can lead the G8 in showing real solidarity by taking the essential action on climate change that the world urgently needs. Now is a moment not for delay or denial.